Right now, it’s almost impossible to escape the hubbub that surrounds Prince Harry and the problems he’s causing the royal family. Whether you listen to the radio, read a newspaper or watch TV, Harry is there – if it’s not in person, it’s in the form of new revelations or accusations. Impossible to escape the recitation of the hard times he had to endure – no, I am not talking about the murder of 25 Afghans, who were apparently only “chess pieces” for him, but the trauma caused by the loss of his mother a quarter of a century ago.
Many of us have lost our mothers too, and we all know how painful it is. But Harry’s mother was special, her death was a very public affair, and Harry was just a very small boy. Without a doubt, he suffered! But, on the other hand, that was a long time ago and now little Harry has grown up: he will be 40 next year. Yet he is still severely traumatized by this loss – so much so that even today he needs therapy.
EMDR, a somewhat exotic psychotherapy
What therapy? Harry being Harry, he didn’t choose a treatment well established by solid evidence. He is clearly fed up with the “establishment” and its offers. He therefore turned to something a little out of the ordinary: “eye movement desensitization and reprocessing”, a method better known by its English acronym, EMDR, for Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
EMDR is a somewhat exotic psychotherapy that was developed specifically to relieve the distress associated with traumatic memories. It is supposed to facilitate access to negative life experiences and their treatment, with a view to resolving them permanently. It is claimed that after successful treatment with EMDR therapy, affective distress is relieved, negative beliefs are reformulated, and physiological arousal is reduced.
During EMDR therapy, the patient is made to focus on emotionally disturbing elements in brief sequential doses, while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. Lateral eye movements directed by the therapist are commonly used as an external stimulus (hence the name EMDR), although Harry seems to prefer hand tapping instead.
Francine Shapiro, the American psychologist who invented EMDR, thought she discovered the technique by accident when she experienced spontaneous jerky eye movements in response to disturbing thoughts during a walk in the woods. Yet, as researcher Gérald Rosen points out, this explanation is difficult to accept because normal saccadic eye movements appear to be physiologically undetectable and are usually triggered by external stimuli.
A treatment “with fairly rapid effects”
Shapiro hypothesized that EMDR therapy facilitates access to the traumatic memory network, so that information processing is enhanced, with new associations forged between the traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. . These new associations are believed to result in full processing of information, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights. Shapiro points out that “treatment effects are quite rapid” and that “the application of EMDR apparently stimulates an inherent physiological processing system that allows dysfunctional information to be resolved adaptively, resulting in better understanding and more functional behavior.
In practice, EMDR therapy takes place according to a three-part protocol:
(1) past events that laid the foundation for dysfunction are processed, forging new associative links with adaptive information;
(2) current circumstances that cause distress are targeted, and internal and external triggers are desensitized;
(3) imaginary models of future events are incorporated, to help the patient learn the skills necessary for adaptive functioning.
But how reliable is the evidence that EMDR does more good than harm? The data turns out to be mixed and generally unconvincing. A recent systematic review found only four randomized clinical trials. Its findings show that “current evidence is limited, and most of it is based on small sample sizes and provides limited follow-up data.” Other studies are more optimistic: one even concludes that, for post-traumatic stress disorder, “therapies such as cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure therapy, eye movements, desensitization and restructuring, along with other trauma-focused therapies, are the current gold standard for treatment.” What might be of particular interest in relation to Harry’s current issues is that EMDR has been reported to “impair memory accuracy, which can be risky if patients later serve witnesses in legal proceedings”.
The value of EMDR is therefore still under discussion. In the meantime, it seems all the same that Harry’s outbursts confirm the hypothesis of the ineffectiveness of EMDR. The whole world is now forced to realize that, in Harry’s case, the permanent elimination of the emotional distress mentioned above is a myth. The poor man is still in agony, and God knows what might happen next. The stakes are high: nothing less than the unity of the royal family and the future of the British monarchy are in danger. As a staunch royalist, I must now urgently undertake research to determine if there is an effective treatment for navel gazing…